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https://openvalley.org/files/original/9e5deaa3739a27a45c37fa4d550febc7.jpg
ab28fa6f7feea7905fbdf6a75c881b4c
Dublin Core
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Title
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New Deal Gallery
Description
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This collection of more than 200 paintings owes its existence to two primary causes: allocations from the Federal Art Project to a New York state tuberculosis sanatorium located at Mt. Morris--the landscapes and still lifes were thought to be restful--and to the committed volunteers who helped preserve the paintings after the hospital closed. For several decades the canvases were stored in non-climate-controlled basements; it appears that doctors and staff removed at least three dozen works as "keepsakes." <br /><br />Despite the seeming tranquility of the paintings, they were created by artists primarily from New York City whose background was more political and aesthetically adventurous than this rural location would indicate. <a href="https://openvalley.org/exhibits/show/green-new-deal/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Follow this hyperlink to a short introduction to the New Deal Gallery collection</a>. We're grateful to the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts for access to their collection, which has been re-photographed and appears here at two resolutions: a cropped, web-friendly file size of around 1 MB; and a high-resolution file including the painting's frame.<br /><br />Items in this collection were created according to a consistent format: a short description of each painting in formal terms, followed by a biography of each artist. Where possible we have supplied hyperlinks relevant to their lives and to other examples of their art. In order to better view them using the Omeka program, click on the "View All" option at the bottom of this page to access various sorting options.
Date
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1935-1940
Contributor
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Cooper, Ken (project director)
Ritz, Abigail (photography and project assistant)
Additional research: Justin Anderson, Jessica Apthorpe, Jay Bang, Kristopher Bangsil, Julia Caldwell, Sydney Cannioto, Sabrina Chan, Paige Closser, Victoria Domon, Elana Evenden, Yadelin Fernandez, Michael Griffin, Madison Jackson, Niamh McCrohan, Ben Michalak, Ricky Noel, Elizabeth Ramsay, Skye Rose, Samantha Schmeer, John Serbalik, Marianna Sheedy, Emily Spina, Alison Stern, Ravenna VanOstrand, and Nicholas Vanamee.
Special thanks to: Deborah Bump, Mark Calicchia, Elizabeth Harris, Melissa Moody, Rebecca Lomuto, and Mai Sato.
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
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oil painting
Physical Dimensions
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29.5 x 23.5 in.
Condition: surface dirt
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Small Town, NY
Publisher
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Federal Art Project
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1936
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ritz, Abigail (photography, biography)
Kristopher Bangsil
Cooper, Ken (biography)
Source
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New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts
Object #FA18374
Format
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jpeg, 1.2 MB
Type
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Still image
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Although a train platform in the foreground bears the name “Small Town,” the frame of Yaghjian’s painting had referenced <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon,_New_York" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Beacon, NY</a> before getting crossed out in favor of this more universal theme. We are invited to ascend a wooden stairway into a quaint town whose buildings are arrayed upon its hillside: a brick commercial building near the tracks, a church and more ornate homes higher up. Warm earthtones and green foliage predominate. Small traces of the forces that would transform such towns lurk at the corners of the painting, like telephone wires or an automobile at lower right.<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /><br />About the Artist</span>: Born in Harpoot, Armenia, Yaghjian immigrated to the US with his family in 1907 and was raised in Providence, RI. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design on scholarship and received a BA in Fine Arts in 1930. He then continued his studies with the Art Students League, where he met <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_French_Sloan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John French Sloan</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Davis_(painter)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stuart Davis</a>, both significant influences upon his work. His work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery, the National Gallery, and many other venues; he was the subject of numerous solo shows. At the 1936 Whitney Biennial, Anita Brenner grouped him with artists like Edward Hopper and NDG artist Dorothy Varian in their use of colors that are “dominant in most American landscapes, intense, precise and small within great space and immense sky.” Some of his most important contributions came as an art teacher, initially for the Art Students League in New York (1938-1943), then briefly at the University of Missouri. In 1945 Yaghjian was hired to head the art faculty at the University of South Carolina, where he taught until retirement in 1972. He was known for painting scenes from everyday life, both in New York and in South Carolina; while he continually painted his surroundings, his style shifted throughout his career from realism to stylized abstraction to abstraction. He lived in Columbia for the rest of his life, where he still was dancing two nights a week at the age of 85. 1 work at the <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edmund-yaghjian-5506" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Smithsonian American Art Museum</a>. 1 work at the <a href="https://gibbesmuseum.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/49EFFAFD-128B-45BC-BC3B-292859903974" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gibbs Museum of Art</a>. 1 work at the <a href="https://chrysler.emuseum.com/search/Yaghjian" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chrysler Museum</a> of Art. 1 work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1 more image at <a href="https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/federal-art-project-photographic-division-collection-5467/series-1/box-24-folder-33" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FAP</a>. <a href="http://digital.tcl.sc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/savage/id/127" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Oral history interview</a> at University of South Carolina.</p>
<p><u>Sources Consulted</u>: Anita Brenner, “Younger Generation at Whitney Biennial,” <em>Brooklyn Daily Eagle</em> 15 Nov. 1936: 10C; South Carolina State Museum, <a href="http://www.tfaoi.org/aa/7aa/7aa926.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Edmund Yaghjian: A Retrospective”</a> (16 March-16 September, 1997).</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Yaghjian, Edmund, 1903-1997
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
202
Beacon, NY
Edmund Yaghjian
Federal Art Project
Landscape Art
New Deal Gallery
painting